L.L. Bean To Link Boots, Coats to a Blockchain

I will say, this is maybe 2 years earlier than I thought this would happen. But no doubt that it would, or that eventually this will be commonplace (except of course for Designer Brands that sell privacy as a service).

In a test due to begin this year, L.L. Bean plans to ship a line of coats and boots with sewn-in sensors that send data to the public Ethereum blockchain platform. The retailer is building a data tracking and analytics system to use customer data stored on Ethereum. Loomia, a Brooklyn-based technology company, plans to provide sheets of flexible circuitry to embed in the apparel, along with a small hardware device that uses near-field communication signals to collect data from the circuits while the custome